Chapter 1. Marshall Hodgson's Civilizational Analysis of Islam: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives

Abstract

Civilizational perspectives, of a more or less consistent kind, are often implicit in area studies; but it is very rare for area specialists to engage in sustained reflection on this background, and to develop their own variations on key themes of civilizational analysis. Marshall Hodgson is perhaps the most outstanding example. His historical analysis of 'Islamdom' and 'Islamicate civilization,' to use his own neologisms, is grounded in a very explicit and sophisticated version of civilizational theory, and the connection works both ways: the civilizational approach throws new light on Islam as a historical phenomenon, and at the same time, it is developed along specific lines that reflect the distinctive features of the case in question. 1 The result is, as far as I can judge, the most ambitious and theoretically articulate Western attempt to understand the Islamic world. If we want to bring Islamic studies and the comparative analysis of civilizations into closer mutual contact, this would seem to be the most promising starting-point. But it has, so far, attracted much less attention than it would merit. There has been no extensive discussion of Hodgson's assumptions and arguments; the current ideological controversies about 'Orientalism' (an overstretched notion if ever there was one) tend to bypass his work, perhaps because it demands a level of historical sensitivity that has now become unfashionable. The following discussion-a brief and tentative sketch which I hope to develop into a more systematic interpretation-will begin with a glance at Hodgson's conception of civilizations as 'primary units of reference' for large-scale comparative history, and then move on to his analysis of Islam. Within the limits of this paper, I can only deal with a few parts of a vast field. Hodgson's interpre

Repositioning ‘Islamdom’

“…Against one-sided views of modernization he stressed creative action and cumulative interaction as essential traits of traditions. Arnason has interpreted Hodgson's idea of tradition in ways that clarify the relation between the micro and the macro dimensions of a civilization, reflecting the mutual interaction between a tradition relying on common practice and diffuse communication and its structural underpinnings (Arnason, 2006). The sociologists' Holy Grail, i.e.…”

“…Björn Wittrock has called the period of spiritual ferment and new institutional crystallizations across the Euro-Afro-Eurasian civilizational area that occurred at a moment of maturity of Islamdom, around the turn of the first millennium CE, and reached its climax in the middle of the thirteenth century, 'ecumenical renaissance' (Wittrock, 2001). Some scholars have attributed an increasing significance to the upheavals of this age within Western Christendom, in some cases considering them no less important than the sixteenth-century Renaissance and Reformation, conventionally identified with the beginnings of European modernity (Arnason, 2003).…”

“…Following Hodgson's approach, we need an analysis of types of worldliness, subjectivity and their supporting cultural forms more than a rigid comparison between civilizational blocks. The concept of 'civilization' does not photograph a geo-cultural unit but denotes a process characterized by original conceptions of the world, modalities of living in the world and approaches to constructing a common world (Arnason, 2001(Arnason, , 2003. Accordingly, the recurrent reluctance within Islamic civilization to sacralize corporate identities and so to strongly legitimize state formations should be assessed as a reflex of a specific civilizational orientation rather than as a cultural deficit exposing a lukewarm will to power.…”

Eccentric modernity? An Islamic perspective on the civilizing process and the public sphere

“…Hodgson is the main author with whom Johann Arnason has engaged while dealing with Islamic civilization. Arnason particularly appreciates Hodgson's sensitivity to the interplay between civilizations and the underlying cultural traditions (Arnason, 2006; see also Salvatore, 2007a: 33-67). Viewed from an Islamic perspective influenced by the work of Hodgson and filtered through Arnason's interpretation of the latter, the exclusive and exemplary character of both the Western civilizing process and the Western public sphere as they emerge from the work of Elias and Habermas might appear in a different light.…”